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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: edamo who wrote (162153)	10/16/2000 10:24:22 AM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 176387

ed - there has long been a "tacit exemption" for direct marketers who have no physical presence in a state. Several rulings both in the tax courts and in federal court have supported this notion. A company called MBI wich owns "The Danbury Mint, "Book of the month club" and other mail order properties has successfully fought this battle a number of times. The rulings claim that it is an unfair burden for companies which have no physical presence in a state to have to determine local tax codes for those states, collect the tax, and distribute it to the local taxing authorities. This does not exempt the customers from their tax liability but it does mean that the collection burden falls on the state or municipal authorities to actually collect the money from the customers, and they can not look to the vendor for anything beyond the record of sale. While you are correct that those authorities can look at DELL's sales to determine what customers owe, they can not ask DELL to either collect the taxes or even track what those taxes ought to be, under current rulings.

To: edamo who wrote (162153)	10/16/2000 11:09:32 AM
From: willcousa	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176387

As a tax professional with a lot of multinational & multistate corporation experience, including with two of Texas' leading companies, I would remind you of the US Constitution and the line of cases governing taxation of interstate commerce. The basic issues have been well reviewed in the context of catalog vendors. A state cannot require an out of state vendor selling into the state in interstate commerce to collect its' sales tax unless there is nexus. Nexus generally requires physical presence of the corporation in the particular state. There are nuances to this but I will stand on the correctness of my assertions.